Thousands of prisoners are to be released up to 18 days early as part of plans drawn up by ministers to ease an overcrowding crisis.
Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, unveiled the measure to the Commons after figures last week showed that the incarcerated population of England and Wales had hit a record high of 88,225.
He also claimed that the government would attempt to return more foreign prisoners and look for prison places abroad to rent for UK criminals.
Government sources said the proposals to free prisoners early would apply to prisoners in England and Wales serving a sentence of less than four years.
The plans, drawn up by ministers last week, were first disclosed by the Guardian on Monday afternoon. They will apply to prisoners whose conditional release dates fall between Monday 16 October and 12 December 2023.
Whitehall sources said the proposals would make resettlement planning difficult, especially for those inmates working with multiple agencies to help them secure accommodation and employment on release.
The proposals would also make the coordination of other appointments that prison leavers must undertake on their day of release extremely difficult, sources said.
The domestic abuse commissioner for England and Wales, Nicole Jacobs, expressed concern at the proposals and demanded further details to ensure the safety of victims.
“Many of those serving short sentences will be in prison for domestic abuse and stalking offences. The Ministry of Justice must seriously consider the safety of victims of domestic abuse and set out clearly how they will be protected,” Jacobs said.
Chalk told MPs: “We have decided to use the power in section 248 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 to allow the prison service to move some of its lowest-risk offenders out of prison on to licence up to 18 days before their automatic release date.
“Let me be clear: this will not apply to anyone serving a life sentence, anyone serving an extended determinate sentence, anyone serving a sentence for an offence of particular concern, anyone convicted of a serious violence offence, anyone convicted of terrorism, anyone convicted of a sex offence.”
He added that releases would be made only under certain conditions, including electronic tagging and attending appointments, and that a breach could lead to “recall to custody for the entire second half of the sentence”.
The plan is similar to a three-year scheme set up by the last Labour government, which released 50,000 offenders 18 days before their sentence reached its halfway point.
Known officially as the end of custody licence, the Labour scheme was heavily criticised by the Conservatives after its introduction in 2007 for being “soft on criminals”.
Responding to the proposals, Pia Sinha, the chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust, said: “We are in a crisis situation where the prison system is just a matter of weeks away from running out of space and becoming dangerously overcrowded. In these circumstances, an early release scheme was the only realistic option available.”
Andrew Neilson, director of campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: “This sounds not dissimilar to the end of custody licence scheme run by Labour from 2007 to just before the 2010 general election in response to the same prison population pressures.”
Chalk told MPs that rapists would be made to serve their full sentences, while fewer “low-level offenders” will be sent to prison under new changes.
The government will attempt to send more prisoners to their home countries and send UK prisoners abroad to serve their sentences, Chalk said. “There are over 10,000 foreign nationals in our prisons. It cannot be right that some of them are sat in prison when they could otherwise be removed from our country.
“We will bring forward legislation to enable prisoners to be held in prisons overseas, an approach taken by Belgium, Norway and Denmark in recent years.”
Offenders who may have been in line for a short stint in prison could instead be given community services such as cleaning up local neighbourhoods as the government looks to contain the expanding prison population, he said.
Chalk rushed out the changes after Lord Justice Edis, the senior presiding judge for England and Wales, reportedly asked judges last week to delay sentencing from Monday for those on bail. Chalk said the report in the Times was “untrue” and that “the most serious and dangerous offenders are being locked away for longer”.
Shabana Mahmood, the shadow justice secretary, said Chalk should have offered an apology for the state of the justice system.
“As everybody knows, the first stage of rehabilitation is to acknowledge your mistakes and make a sincere apology to those affected and let down by your actions or in his case inactions. His failure to do so today is utterly inexcusable,” she said.
